A MAJOR cleaning operation at Southport and Formby District General Hospital is set to fall behind a Government deadline for completion.

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust this week confirmed to the Midweek Visiter it had started a mandatory “deep clean” at its sites in each town, but added that the operation in Southport is set to continue into the autumn.

That sees the Trust lagging behind the Government’s aim of completing the process by the end of March, as announced by health secretary Alan Johnson.

Trust spokesman Matthew King described the operation as a “big job”, involving moving patients from wards in which the deep clean is underway.

And he pinned the failure to hit the deadline set by Mr Johnson on “the nature of the task”. “We would sooner do a thorough job than a rush-job to hit a deadline,” said Mr King.

Last November the Midweek Visiter reported how the trust had been set a “very challenging” annual target of 10 MRSA cases a year – the lowest figure for any acute hospital in the country. The tough target came on the back of what it described as its “excellent record” of fighting the bacterium .

The deep-cleaning move at all 1,500 hospitals in England follows a speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the Labour Party conference in September, as part of a new drive against MRSA and Clostridium difficile (known as C-diff).

Explaining the size of the task, Mr King saidcleaners have “got to work around patients”. He revealed that the deep clean at Ormskirk and District General Hospital is scheduled to be finished by the end of March. But at Southport’s hospital the measures could drag on until September or October, said Mr King.

That programme has been agreed with Sefton Primary Care Trust, and Mr King stressed that the hospital trust regularly performs deep cleaning aside from the mandatory programme – with that stepped up to counter any “infection issue” that arises.